Cluster of Blueberries and A Teaspoon of Cream
by Bright Ophelia
Summary: Of marriage and not so happily ever afterwards. Because nothing, she knows now at the age of thirty seven going on thirty eight lasts forever. Matrimony is not what she thought it would be at the reckless age of twenty one, and she finds as she wakes up to a deafening crash from her kitchen on Saturday morning that she isn't the only one with such views.
1. Prologue: Clash of the Cake Tins

**Prologue: Clash of the Cake Tins**

Her name is Amelia Jessica Pond and she's almost thirty eight.

She wakes up every morning at the same time, week day or weekend, Bank holidays and Christmas, Easter and Ash Wednesday, even Pancake day, take your pick. She wakes up and lives through her day, her schedule and timetable.

Yesterday like today, today like today, tomorrow like Thursday. She's become a creature of habit like all humans are, precise and predictable, dissatisfied with the phenomenon that was her life.

(The diaries piled under her bed, gathering grey dust are the only reminder that she was the exact opposite of the 'p' word once. Upon a time.)

So, when she wakes up at 10:38 am according to the ghastly thing that is her alarm clock in the shape of a toadstool (a joke from Zippy two years back on the anniversary), she wonders which of the two things that pop up in her head is more strange; the fact that she overslept, straight through her normal waking hour of six thirty in the morning –

_Or the sound of all her cake tins being thrown mercilessly to the kitchen floor she wiped last night._

She stops clawing at the cool space next to her.

She gave up scolding herself for this particular habitual act weeks back but the feeling of thin contempt crops up as she repeats this silly ritual, even after eight months.

She jumps out of bed with surprising grace and gusto for a woman of her age who's been in bed for the last twelve hours. She picks up a sweater, throws it over her head and shoves her arms through it. Her hair gets caught, sticking to the wool and her face, but she impatiently brushes it off to whip the whole thing into a quick bunch at the back of her head. Then she proceeds to pick up the trusty cricket bat and tests it in her right hand. She makes sure that it feels right and the grip is steady.

The clattering happens again and she sighs, at whoever it is that is attempting to raid her kitchen.

"What a bloody idiot," she mutters crossly and decides to go with the element of surprise.

(In retrospect, the sensible thing to have done would have been calling the police or some other group did cross her mind for a moment. But for some reason (perhaps she had just known), the idea that she should tend to it struck her as a better idea.)

The possibility of vague danger lingers in the air as she adjusts her sweater.

Her concept of 'dangerous' is different from every other person's dictionary as it takes a great deal to scare her off. Her senses tend to be completely underdeveloped as they prompt her to very literally laugh into the face of danger.

(She told a once-you-take-your-eyes-off-it-you-forget-it/world dominating alien that it was ugly even after it kidnapped her)

It tells something about her state of mind, but that's another story.

She opens the door, no time to waste and walks down the silent hallways, down the steps.

She tiptoes to the kitchen, determined to surprise the stupid thief with her appearance alone - thirty eight year old woman with hair like a hairstylist's poor attempt to go for the 'natural look', nightie and an over stretched sweater that was a shocking shade of bright green.

_Yeah, that'll do the trick._

Then she's going to thwack them with the cricket bat.

She hops down the steps, one, two, three and enjoys the feel of the cool wooden boards creaking slightly as she goes down barefoot.

_CLANG!_

What _was _this? A cake tin bandit?

_CLANG?_

She throws silence out the window as she runs across to the kitchen. The carpet muffles her footsteps and scratch the soft skin of her soles but all the noise from the kitchen masks any sound from her.

She places herself near the doorway, counts to three –

_CLANG!_

And leaps out, holding back the cricket bat threateningly –

"Amelia!"

And hell, does she (nearly) drop it.

"Ha! Amelia Pond! Knew it was the right house, bright blue door, the garden gnome that looks like a Dalek and the water pistol on the flower bed -"

He crumples to the floor like he did almost nineteen years ago when she hit him with the same weapon of choice.

Funny old life, recreating the exact same situation, again and again –

She edges over, after making sure that he's completely out cold and peers.

To this day, she has no idea why she did it, but the cricket bat was rocketing towards his face, that stupid face - a rectangle with floppy brown hair on top of it before she even knew what she was doing.

There, on her squeaky clean kitchen floor, was him, the unmistakable man.

_The Doctor._

After nearly seventeen years, he comes, with a crash and a clang, bow tie and that tweed jacket, back into her life.

With a _beret._


	2. Chapter 1: Late (again)

**Chapter 1: Late (again)**

She must have hit him harder than she thought.

Because by the time she wipes off remnants of yesterday's make up, takes a hot shower and dresses in a big vintage dress that looks like a lace tablecloth, he's still slumped next to the oven she's (surprise!) cuffed him to.

It's when she's done the washing up and enjoying shortbread, she hears the odd yelp.

"Ow, I – How – no – earth – _handcuffs_? Where do you even get handcuffs? Amelia! Give that back!"

"What, this?"

She points to the beret she's fiddling about and examining under the eye of barely concealed scepticism.

She's focusing on the beret because she doesn't really believe he's_ here, really_ here. And she doesn't know how to act either.

_Sad? Angry? Happy? Upset? Overwhelmed?_

It's a pause, silence and a half drawn exclamation, an unanswered secret –

"You're.. old?"

She sort of drops the shortbread on the plate and her voice grates out with the scraping sound of the plate spinning on the table, "Old? Really, sixteen, seventeen years and the first thing you can say to me is, one, _where's my beret _and two, _you're old_? Is that what you told Sarah Jane?

"Sixteen? What? And how do you know Sarah?"

She must have hit him really hard because he only keeps spitting out half sentences and flapping about on the floor. She sighs, having the same conflicted feeling she has after an argument with Zippy.

She looks at him there on the floor and she feels something in her drop.

Perhaps she's grown old, grown up, grown tired.

He doesn't look a day older from the day she said goodbye, a moment of forever. She dunks her head onto the table, wishing this was a ridiculous dream, not Saturday morning.

She's reluctant, scared to face the inevitable truth, staring at her, right in front of her.

All those things she promised herself, all the scenarios and situations she dreamt up, directed, rewrote and edited in her head – of what she would do the day she ever met him again is gone like a forgotten promise.

("_We need to stop doing, instead we need to talk.")_

She's so very tired of putting up a fight. With herself and him. She's not the angry girl of nineteen, ferociously perverse and acting her heart out with flirting and teasing.

Something crumbles, something collapses. And something hardens.

So she stands up without a word, pulling the threads of her worn heart together as she steps over to him with the sonic she took out from his pocket.\

The familiar buzz is almost welcoming and she very nearly manages the realest smile in some time.

"Hungry?" she says kindly (kindness for herself, so she'll stop hating - oh she's so tired) as she hears the handcuffs clink. He looks bewildered as she was half an hour ago as she starts to lay out the saucepans and rummages through the fridge.

"Sit there, I'll cook us some pasta. I took a course in Italian cooking and I'm quite good now," she smiles once more, the polite, nice one. The one she reverts to when she wants to stop fighting and arguing, the one she learned a long time ago from someone - that even with all the pain, it was much better, so much more relieving to be _kind_.

It lessens the ache she carries with her and stops every sort of emotion from overflowing, gushing and bleeding.

He looks as if he might say something but stops.

Perhaps it's the look in her eyes or the lines around her forehead or the sudden change in attitude. But he complies anyway to leave her to cook the food.

He doesn't say a word until she lays the plates next to the forks and spoons he's already set up.

* * *

_"What's happened?"_

She pops the question.

The one, out of the few that hangs over their heads. The definite few that they both want to avoid, dreading the moment they might be asked, knowing that they have to confront it sooner or later.

It's like cutting roughly healed flesh around a not quite treated wound to dig out the root of the pain.

The silence is unbearably thick and choking as she doesn't remember how she's managed to eat half of the fuseli.

So she attacks first.

"Nothing. What do you mean what's happened?"

He's lying. Oh he's so so lying. Strange how she's forgotten the interacting and joking but she remembers the expressions. The ones that she vaguely suspected because she never trusted anything or anyone.

It's the first time she genuinely feels the merits of getting old as she reads and knows instinctively that he's hiding something, guarded and wary. After the years of meeting people, clashing and arguing, making up and falling out she's developed a sense of knowing what they're up to. People aren't that different in the majority. She isn't naive like she was, ready to trust him, believe even with all the lies he slipped now and then. She can spot them now.

Or maybe it's because he's been spending time with humans for so long. He's become like them. Even though she's never met any other Time Lords, with all his rambles of being alien, he's the most human person she's ever met.

"Oh don't give me that. I know something's up, or you wouldn't have come to me."

"I wanted to stop by to see –"

"Um, sixteen years?"

He has the decency to look the tiniest bit guilty, "TARDIS, you know how she is, always -"

"Late."

She slaps the table in emphasis and he doesn't push it further, looking like she dosed hot water over him. Honestly, it's like dealing with Zippy, right down to the posture and emotions flitting across his face.

She very nearly laughs as he shoots her a confused look.

"Where's Rory? Still in bed? Sick?" he inquires, the light worry and streaked curiosity in his forehead.

That takes the smile right off her face as she freezes a little.

* * *

_(Amy Pond, always Pond – little girl, teenager, bride, married, mum, divorced – she was always Pond. It was her, her name in the constantly changing, fluctuating universe, the only thing that was truly hers. Now she sits in her kitchen table she cleaned yesterday, lips slightly parted at an unexpected blow. This woman is quite patient, after the years of being weathered and smoothed by, well, time itself. And now this woman manipulates time, this single second for herself under that slightly parted lip to decide how to react. The giant wad of feelings are flipping in her stomach, not quite sure what sort of emotion it should look like. After nanoseconds of capricious transformation, it decides to resume the shape of the dormant calmness and kindness altogether with a mask of pleasantness._

_Now, after not showing his face for sixteen bloody years, this old friend of hers, has the nerve to show up in her kitchen with the smile of a six year old in a toy shop. Then he takes it up to eleven as she asks her the question._

_The question concerning a very sensitive subject with his nauseating optimism._

_So what should she do?)_

* * *

_That _question, the one where she didn't quite want him to ask. Not yet.

When she gets past the initial shock from dread, she tries to look calm and looks back at him with the old tugging of the corners of her mouth, the_ not-so-there_ smile -

It's when she gets it that he's not asking a question, rather a confirmation.

The fist wrapped around the fork is still there where she slapped onto the table moments ago, a glaring tell-tale sign she wants to hide, make it disappear.

She lets the fork down quietly on the plate and swallows, not quite ready despite the many rehearsals she's had before, telling various people. She hides her face as she takes a deep breath and turns back, smiling, her best and brightest. The one she gave Zippy four months back, as the two of them knelt on the floor, crying together, apologising for everything.

"Well…" she clears her throat and gulps down a large glass of water, "Oh, Doctor. We got a divorced. Eight months ago. It's just me now. Amy Pond. As I've almost always been."

He looks…

disappointed.

It's a trapped look, still and stiff from the moment she let the cat out of the bag.

The twinge of guilt twangs quite forcefully and she wants to look away from him, his eyes.

She's never been the best liar and even with all her anguish, she could never lie to him in the end.

(Guilt, guilt, guilt.)

But why should she be guilty? Why? It was her life, her choice, and in the end it was better for the both of them -

"But why?" he sounds panicked, as if he doesn't want it to be true – "Pond please, it's not true is it? You're just joking -"

"Why? _Why?"_ she feels her voice rising with each word, patience gone left with cooling fury.

"Amy, please. It's not -"

"It is. Don't say –" her voice is thick as the tears start dripping down her face. Thick pearly white tears that streams down a cracked mask, the newly applied make up.

His heart breaks as he watches –

* * *

**Or, the _other_ approach.**

"Well," she drops her fork with a ringing clang and scrape, "As you can see, Rory and I, me and Rory… We got a divorce. Eight months ago. After two months of counseling, er, or was that three?" she ticks off the days as she recounts the last year.

She watches with some newly sprung up perverseness as his face falls in shock.

She stands up to put her plate into the sink and spins on the spot, finishing her account.

"Oh, I think it was three. Yeah, three months of counseling, talking, shouting, a long bout of sighing, then divorce - though Rory moved out two weeks prior to signing the papers. Yup. So eight months and I'm here, my house. Back to Amy Pond, as always."

"But you two!" he stands, arms waving about, in the same voice of horror when he found out she went to parties and kissed people. "You two! How – why – you can't -"

She feels a sigh building up in her chest cavity and the twinge of irritation wrapping itself around her. She waits for him to start and finish the 'scolding' (seriously, he _was_ worse than her aunt, god rest her soul) and fiddles with the jam jar next to her.

"Rory and Amy Pond. Of Leadworth. The girl and boy who waited -"

"I _know _-"

"You were like a pair of lovebirds -"

"Love birds grow out of lovering one day -"

"Two thousand years - All that kissing -"

"Doctor, shut up!"

* * *

(Amy Pond is sure of exactly two things that happened that day.

One, The Doctor was in her kitchen.

And two, the bruise marked squarely on his forehead left by the jam jar as it slipped out of her hands proves the fact.)

* * *

**E/N:** This isn't that long, but oh what the heck.

You weren't quite expecting that were you? Neither was I. This is threatening to turn into a rom-com, more dialogue less self-reflection. This is really not what I was expecting as I started this either but it works. I quite like it:)

The thing in the middle is like a 'narration' you get in some films (e.g. 500 Days of Summer) which sprang up as I was writing it. I was kind of conflicted on how I would approach the pair meeting after some time (sixteen years); angst vs some resignation and acceptance (on Amy's part at least).

It's strange because I originally wanted to do the **'Amy and Rory got divorced'** ages before S6 aired because I was still under the idea that those two would have a happily ever after together (though the latter is true in the end of S7). I'm really perverse, aren't I? I wanted to** split them up and have the Doctor understand **that even with all the battling aliens and saving universes there were** something he couldn't do** - like **fix a couple that got divorced, no matter how 'perfect' and 'right' they seemed to be.**

Then I had a long Skype discussion with SkyWideOpen about this and found we both had similar ideas. So basically we took different approaches to the same subject. Though his seems (and probably will be - Nooooooo) more ANGSTY ('In Quiet Desperation' - just look at the title:) than this is. Mine is more lighter and ridiculous (?) Power-of-Three style. But not cracky:) I do have things I'm dealing with since it's the whole reason I had the idea in the first place and the bold highlights in the above paragraphs are the things I'm trying to get across. So let's all sit back (me included) and see where it takes us:)

Reviews sweeties!


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